The invention relates to a tape used to feed clothing accessories like buttons, hooks, and snaps during the sewing process.
Generally, the buttons, hooks, or snaps fed to a workpiece fabric during the sewing process are packaged in a box or a bag. When buttons are stitched manually or sewed by a machine specially designed for such purposes, this presents no problem in sewing buttons. More recently however, in view of higher levels of automation and less manual work, such sewing processes have become problematic and require improvement.
In conventional button feeding apparatus, buttons are supplied to a bowl in batches and the buttons are separated and arranged in one line in a guide and kept front side facing up. This process is conducted by a special vibrating device. Thereafter, buttons are rotated to align their button holes with guide pins placing the button in a ready-to-transfer position. Subsequently, a loading device, provided at the sewing machine, transfers the buttons to the correct position on the fabric, clamps them, and the sewing machine starts stitching.
Such conventional mechanisms are very complicated, bulky, and expensive even though the button positioning process is only a preliminary part of button stitching work. Additionally, due to unequal button shape or malfunction of the complicated mechanism, it is unavoidable that some buttons are incorrectly stitched. In such cases, time is wasted amending the problem and in the worst cases, the workpiece itself is judged to be inferior goods. Further, when several kinds of buttons are stitched to a workpiece, the button positioning mechanism requires a change each time the buttons are changed. This represents a major impediment to total automation of apparel stitching work.
In response to this problem, Japanese Patent No. 56-27294 discloses a button feeding tape on which a plurality of buttons are detachably secured in a line. A drawback of this arrangement is that it is difficult to maintain proper adhesion between the buttons and the tape. Additionally, the fabric may be damaged or stained by the adhesive and the back sides of the buttons must always be flat. Further, when a button is transferred to the button clamp of a sewing machine, the button cannot be correctly positioned on the button clamp thus rendering the arrangement less than practical. It is possible to improve the arrangement by designing buttons adapted for automatic stitching, but from the viewpoint of apparel design such a restriction is not desirable.